‘Final Analysis’ is one of those peculiar films that exudes a strange
fascination despite itself. The longer it goes, the sillier it gets,
yet the plot twists -- outrageous as they are -- compel us to keep
watching.

Richard Gere stars as Dr. Isaac Barr, a San Francisco psychiatrist who
hires himself out as an expert defense witness in insanity cases when
he’s not treating his regular patients. When he complains wistfully to
a friend of his life’s monotony -- "I just want to be surprised" -- we
know he’s in a for a major dose of "be careful what you wish for." One
of Isaac’s newest clients is Diana (Uma Thurman), a beautiful young
neurotic who may be reacting to a past trauma. When Diana urges Isaac
to confer with her sister Heather (Kim Basinger), sparks soon fly.
Isaac finds himself in the unethical position of sleeping with Heather
(bad), who’s also the wife of a mobster (worse) and who apparently has
a very odd reaction to alcohol (catastrophic). Naturally, as in all
film noir, the situation isn’t quite what it seems.

From the look and sound of the opening credits onward, it’s clear that
the makers of ‘Final Analysis’ want to make a ‘50s Hitchcock-style
thriller. However, the direction of Phil Joanou (who has since done a
lot of work with U2) is so insistent on trying to be both hip and
melodramatic that his affectations cancel each other out. We can’t
quite believe in the characters, so we’re not invested when things
start going wrong.

Acoustically, ‘Final Analysis’ has some unusual dialogue levels. Joanou
has the cast speak in near-whispers most of the time. When an ambient
rainstorm kicks in at normal volume in Chapter 6, it’s a relief.
Chapter 14 contains shots of the Golden Gate bridge that appear to have
been meticulously color-processed to match the look of newly-minted
‘50s/’60s film prints. Shots down the length of a lighthouse in the
same chapter and in Chapter 35 contain ‘50s/’60s-style optical process
shots that would be a lot cleaner-looking had ‘Final Analysis’ been
made just a few years later. George Fenton’s score is so heavy on
strings and horns that it becomes a cliché in itself -- the already
overwrought emotions hardly need this sort of musical emphasis.

A sex scene in Chapter 8 shows lots of skin (and proves that we’re not
in the Hays Code era any more) without revealing a single interesting
or even endearing trait of either participant. Gere does his best to
make Barr sympathetic, but there’s only so much he can do without the
support of the material. Basinger, whose part becomes goofier as it
goes along, likewise gets little aid in making Heather’s contradictory
personality seem cohesive.

To the credit of screenwriter Wesley Strick, working from a story
credit to him and Robert Berger, if viewers can hang in until Chapter
24, the narrative becomes genuinely intriguing, if never entirely
plausible. Finally, ‘Analysis’ succeeds as a guilty pleasure. Its
screwy reversals pile up so thickly that we wind up in the position of
wanting to know what comes next, even though we don’t believe a word of
it.